


for we will destroy this place

by anaesthetist



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Established Relationship, M/M, Post-Canon Fix-It, just an excuse to get john in a kilt
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-22
Updated: 2020-11-22
Packaged: 2021-03-09 23:02:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27673733
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anaesthetist/pseuds/anaesthetist
Summary: “You know,” John said, clearing his throat, “it is quite common a tradition here to be married in one’s father’s house.”Edward’s eyes raised to the high ceilings, then returned to John. “Such is the queerness of the Scotch Church,” he said, reaching up to take John’s face in his hands when a noise of indignation escaped him. “Though I do hope that wasn’t a proposal.”
Relationships: Lt John Irving/Lt Edward Little
Comments: 4
Kudos: 15





	for we will destroy this place

**Author's Note:**

> o wad some power the giftie gie us  
> to see oursels as ithers see us

“You must have thought me a terrible brute never to have written you a word of condolence,” Edward said, unprompted, as though the thought had plagued him for some time. “Know I only wished not to impose burden on your misery by troubling you for a letter.”

Edward—a brute! The thought almost amused John to laughter. He turned where he stood by the stairs, scarf in the process of being unwound, and reached across the short distance that separated them. Through the thick tweed of his coat, he rested a hand atop his arm and squeezed down gently. At once, under such a meagre touch, the stiffness in Edward’s brow retreated and his eyes rose from the floor. They mirrored one another’s shy smiles.

“A burden to me you could never be,” John told him, though he must have known well enough.

Was it not abundantly apparent—hadn’t it always been—that Edward could be no burden, and bring him no trouble? _You are the light of my life_ , he had written to him once, but never sent, ashamed by the silly romance of it all. It was enough that he knew, that God knew, and all that followed after would be as it was.

Should I not be happy, or fortunate, he would pray, at least in this wretched life let me be loved.

And Edward did. Of that, of this world if nothing else, John was most certain. It was, as those soppy English romances often attested, most evident in the eyes. Drawn to the earth and sad as they were, John had found it in them; a true sense of himself through someone else’s eyes. Not as he once was, or as he could be, but as the trebling flesh cut from the ice that stood before him.

He was as he was, and Edward wanted for nothing else.

“Very well,” Edward conceded, setting a hand to the one that rested on his arms. He swiped John’s knuckles with his thumb, shy and delicate, as though they had not closed the door behind them. “I shan’t worry myself.”

If only, John thought, finally bringing his hand back to himself.

With some reluctance, much more settled in Edward’s presence than he ever was here, John ascended the stairs. As he climbed, as cautious of making noise in this place as he had been as a much younger man, they still creaked where he remembered, two from the top and third from the bottom. He looked over his shoulder when he reached the top, finding Edward still looking.

“I won’t be a moment,” he called down, to which Edward nodded his understanding and disappeared in the direction of the drawing room.

There were no ghosts in this house, for the devil could not call forth God’s sleeping children, but there was a memory alive here. It breathed down the back of John’s neck, kissing him like a winter wind but igniting something molten beneath his skin. Touching the edge of his scarf, now hanging loose over his shoulders, his body, trapped between the two sensations, gave an almighty shudder.

God was in this place, but not as He had been _there_.

They would never be so close to God again.

Trodden from its former brilliance, John followed the pattern of the carpet to his former room. It was, as he might have expected, not entirely as he had left it. That his father might have grown sentimental in his absence had never occurred to him, but to have things as they were would have been nice.

As it was, all that remained on the surface, between stacks of his father’s books, was a letter to Malcolm he had not finished writing. Closed, he imagined his father finding it and folding it over as if he could not stand to look at it, as if he _knew_ —

And he must have; what else but his true disposition would have caused such indifference from his father? He had done all as he pleased and crossed every inch of earth while doing so. He must have known, John thought, sliding his thumb between the fold in the page to let it fall open. In a slightly better hand than he was capable of writing now, it read:

_My dear Malcolm—I am certain that there lurks in your generous nature some slight capacity to pardon my unmannerly and inconceivable delay in writing to you. I shall, should it please you, devote the days left to me by God to removing from your mind what wretched suggestion my silence has implied and remind you that your correspondence is the greatest blessing in my life—that you, my dear friend, are the greatest mercy ever shown to me._

Still it was, he thought, despite all things from which he had been saved. Loneliness had been the greatest torture of them all.

He left the letter be.

All that he had returned for—a coat—was not in his wardrobe as he had supposed it might be. He almost cursed his father, but stopped himself from doing so, sucking on his teeth to silence to stop it. Just as he was about to close the door of it once more, a strip of green caught his eye from the very corner of the wardrobe.

“Goodness gracious,” he muttered, reaching for the fly plaid.

It was heavier than he remembered, he found, laying the thick woollen garment over his arm. Muted green and blue, he had always felt it quite garish, too much a step away from the blues and blacks of a southernly gentleman, but before him now it seemed quite charming. _Regal_ , one might say, far removed from any implication of barbarity it might have once had.

He laid the plaid at the bottom of his bed and returned to the wardrobe, this time searching out a kilt.

As a much younger man, he had worn it only once or twice. Sir Walter, God rest him, had been quite the proponent of the kilt, and owing to how closely his father held him in his rare affections, they had been expected to wear one.

John laid the kilt with the plaid, letting a finger linger down its pleats.

He touched the buttons of his suspenders, thought, _there’s no harm in it_ , and finally took off his scarf.

Urged on by the cold air around him, he dressed quickly, starting with woollen hose and ending with a shucking on of his jacket. In the absence of a broach, he wrapped the plaid over his shoulder and under his arm, done up, one might say, like some sort of biblical shepherd. Standing before the mirror in the corner, he examined himself, finding he looked like a regular old man o’ war, should the Navy ever have allowed such dress.

How oddly freeing a kilt was, John found himself thinking, tracing scarred fingers down the rough material, watching it shift with his movements. It landed, as was expected of a gentleman, right on the bend of his knee.

Scandalous, it could be said, had the garment been something different.

“You look quite ready for a wedding,” came Edward’s voice suddenly. John caught sight of his reflection in the mirror, standing with his face turned to the floor, but his eyes raised coyly. “If you had been a woman, I’d have married you,” he said.

John bristled ever so slightly.

“If I’d have been a woman,” he said, “you would have found me an excellent friend.”

Edward laughed, gentle, agreeing with a soft, “Quite so,” and began to cross the room. John turned to meet him. He ran a finger along the fold of his plaid, setting it neatly against John’s jacket. His eyes roamed.

“You know,” John said, clearing his throat, “it is quite common a tradition here to be married in one’s father’s house.”

Edward’s eyes raised to the high ceilings, then returned to John. “Such is the queerness of the Scotch Church,” he said, reaching up to take John’s face in his hands when a noise of indignation escaped him. “Though I do hope that wasn’t a proposal.”

John felt his cheeks warm at the mere suggestion of such an act. Marriage was no sacrament, only a good and holy ordinance of God, and yet—and yet he wanted for it. He wanted, as he had always wanted, the approval of those that surrounded him. He wanted it as though that, of all things, would deem him more worthy of God’s good grace. _How terribly papist_ , he thought.

Setting his hands on Edward’s wrists, he said, “Not quite.”

“Some acts are better done on one’s knees, no?” Edward said, the warmth of his breath catching in the damp inner edge of John’s lip. He rested their foreheads together and dropped his hands. John still felt the heat of them through the thick material of his kilt. “It’s heavy.”

“It’s a cold country,” John just about managed to choke out, feeling the edge of his kilt rise up his knee as Edward bunched it in his hand. “Not quite meant for what you have in mind, I shouldn’t think.”

With that, Edward kissed him, finally lifting the kilt high enough to slip his hand beneath it. Of course— _of course_ he did not touch him straightaway, feeling up the inside of his thigh, following up the line of his groin. John felt Edward’s lips stretch into a smile against his cheek as he suffered silently, not allowing himself to ask for it, never asking for more.

“John.”

It was then that Edward’s knuckles, hand griping his thigh, bumped against the base of John’s dick, making his bones go liquid. He was going to collapse, he thought, bare, cold knees hitting the ground first. Weighing him down too now was Edward tucking his face into his shoulder, into the fabric of his plaid, resting himself there like it was where he most belonged. And perhaps he did. John would never deprive him of such a comfort, and especially not when he was holding him in a loose fist.

“Jesus, Edward,” John blurted. “Edward.”

Edward was breathing open-mouthed against his neck, quick and thin, and his hand jerked like he wanted to move, but couldn’t remember how. God, did he know _how_.

“I can—” he started, voice thick as syrup. He stopped to retract his hand and spit in his palm. “If you want, I can—”

A new shudder passed through John, starting from his shoulders and traveling down until his knees shook. Feeling him falter, Edward, mouthing his own stream of consciousness against his shoulder, tried to keep him upright, moving his arm to wrap around the narrow expanse of his middle. He hitched him up against himself.

John dug his fingers into Edward’s back.

“Quite the consolation, is it not?” Edward asked. “If we are not to be married in your father’s house—”

“Don’t,” John said, voice somewhat returned to him. He rubbed his cheek atop of Edward’s head, breathing into the mess of his hair that tickled his nose. “Say nothing more of it, Christ.”

And so he said nothing more of it, silenced like a liar scolded, and touched John until it was over, until he was left with a curious sense of terror and wet thighs where Edward wiped his fingers clean. His belly continued to quiver, and his fingers stroked up Edward’s back until the came to the base of his skull, where he held him firmly in place.

Edward did not lift his head from his shoulder, nor his hand from his thigh.

“I would, too,” John said quietly, watching Edward’s hair bleed black through his fingers. Chest to chest and out of sync, he felt Edward’s every breath in the slow expanse of his ribcage. “I’d marry you if they’d let me.”

Finally, Edward raised his head. He cupped his free hand to John’s cheek.

“And until they do, I shall have great fodder for my dreams until then,” Edward said, swiping a thumb over his cheek. “In haste may it come.”

**Author's Note:**

> no full kilt sex cause i don't want nicola sturgeon to throw me into the north sea.


End file.
